Remote control devices are known and have been used for many years to control one appliance. In recent years, universal remote controllers have been developed which attempt to control multiple appliances with a single device. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/870,353, filed Sep. 30, 2015, now issued as U.S. Pat. No. 9,842,491, issued Dec. 12, 2017, assigned to the common assignee of the present application and incorporated herein by reference, describes a universal remote controller implemented as an application (or “app”) on a hand-held smart device, like a mobile phone, tablet, etc. The app has a unified interface for WiFi and IR remote-controlled appliances.
Reference is now made to FIG. 1, which generally illustrates the operation of such a universal remote controller 100 and to FIG. 2, which details the elements of the user interface of universal remote controller 100. Each end user 102 has the application downloaded on his/her own mobile device and uses it to control the appliances 110 in his/her space, such as a home, an office, etc. Appliances 110 may be WiFi appliances 110a, such as digital media, TV, etc., or infrared (IR) controlled devices 110b, such as set top boxes and air conditioning units.
In addition, each remote controller 100 communicates with an Internet-based server 110, which provides information to the multiple remote controllers 100.
As shown in FIG. 2, universal remote controller 100 may have multiple sections to its user interface. One section 102, on the top of the user interface, shows breadcrumbs of the multiple types of appliances available to be controlled and enables the user to add a new appliance to his/her personal list of appliances. A second section 104, on the side of the user interface, is a device selector and enables the user to change the appliance currently being controlled (chosen from among those associated with this mobile device).
A third section 106, in the lower middle of the display, is a device input panel with multiple control buttons. The input panel shown in FIG. 2 has the cursor, volume and play related buttons on it. The various types of control buttons are organized into a plurality of panels organized by topic, such as volume, channel, alphabetic, buttons needed for watching a show, a device input panel selector and are changeable using the device input panel selector 108 at the bottom of the display.
Finally, the user interface has a device output panel 109, used to provide any output from the device, if such is available.
To add a new appliance to its database of controlled appliances, a designer has to register each instruction of the appliance and associate it with a control instruction on one of the input panels of the universal remote controller. In addition, the universal remote controller has a separate state machine for each appliance, which the designer needs to build for any new appliance.